All posts tagged ‘HTML’

In HTML, meta tags describe the content of the document in which they’re written. Meta tags have two possible attributes:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">

and

<META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">

. Meta tags with an

HTTP-EQUIV

attribute are analogous to

HTTP

headers that can control the action of browsers. Meta tags with a

NAME

attribute are used primarily by indexing and searching tools. These tools can gather meta information in order to sort and classify web pages. One way to help your document show up more frequently in search engines and directories is to use the

META NAME

attribute to set keywords that will pull up your site when someone does a search for those words.

When you type regular letters, numbers, and characters from your keyboard into the body of an HTML document, they show up on your Web pages just as you typed them. But things aren’t so easy in non-English speaking countries (and such places do exist – honest). Languages such as French, German, and Icelandic often use characters that are not found on your typical keyboard. Even in English, accents can distinguish a “résumé” from a “resume.”

So how do you make special characters and accented letters show up on your pages? You use a special set of codes called character entities, which you insert into your HTML code and which your browser will display as the corresponding symbols or characters you want.

In object-oriented programming, an object is a self-contained entity that consists of both data and manipulation procedures.

Similarly, HTML 4.0 includes the <OBJECT> element to extend HTML in order to make it more dynamic. <OBJECT> allows an author to download external data or programs into the current page. This element can be used to gather other pieces of information, including Java applets, ActiveX controls, and possibly dHTML. The long-term goal of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is for the <OBJECT> element to become the only way to embed data, replacing the <APPLET> and <IMG> elements.

Childhood, as far as your basic cheese selections go, was easy. In your typical middle-class family, you had one of three choices:cheddar, Monterey Jack, and those precious, flat, sandwich-sized slices of American. That’s what all the cool kids ate. I had to fight my mother to get those into my lunch. She used to make sandwiches with these huge slabs of cheddar cheese that looked like they were hewed from the side of an orange glacier. Although I lost the Wonder Bread battle, I didn’t give an inch on this one. For some reason, Mom couldn’t see the simple beauty in a perfectly proportioned square of processed cheese food.

The problem with childhood is that we never appreciate it while we have the chance. As I grew up, I developed more mature needs and tastes. Like many young adults lost in the hype of ’80s mass cultural wonders like Molly Ringwald and Oingo Boingo, I began to experiment. I told myself that I didn’t have a problem, but a little brie here, and a bit of Chaumont there, and before I knew it, I was hooked.

HTML is the lingua franca of the web. It’s a simple, universal mark-up language that allows web publishers to create complex pages of text and images that can be viewed by anyone else on the web, regardless of what kind of computer or browser is being used.

Despite what you might have heard, you don’t need any special software to create an HTML page; all you need is a word processor (such as SimpleText, BBEdit, or Microsoft Word) and a working knowledge of HTML. And lucky for all of us, basic HTML is dead easy.

It’s All About the Tags

HTML is just a series of tags that are integrated into a text document. They’re a lot like stage directions — silently telling the browser what to do, and what props to use.
Continue Reading “Make an HTML Document” »